Tera's Temple of Temerity

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Beating up high level monsters in Bluehole's action MMO.

By Charles Onyett

Bluehole's Tera is almost out in North America, set to launch on May 1. From what's been shown so far, its standout feature is combat. Playing as an axe-wielding Berserker class, the style of experience is more like God of War than World of Warcraft, which should be a nice change of pace for MMO fans tired of the restrictive traditional MMO fighting.

At GDC 2012, some of Tera's high level gameplay was shown off. Specifically, the Temple of Temerity, a Gears of War Horde Mode-style challenge that sends waves of monsters crashing into your party as you try to defend a relic. Though Tera's gameplay may be less traditional, you will still need a healer, tank and damage dealers appear to survive more challenging encounters.

As the Temple of Temerity's defense sequence begins, four gates open around a small room occupied by your group. Monsters will filter through the doorways and try to attack the relic, and if they blow it up, you lose. As a Berserker, I had to use a variety of charge-up axe slashes and whirlwind attacks to hack through enemy heath bars to keep the relic's stability intact.

A kill counter tracks the number of monsters slain, and at certain levels it will unlock bonuses, partially refilling the health of the relic. There's also a timer, and after 10 minutes, items spawn into the room. First you get barrels, which will detonate when hit and wipe out any nearby enemies. Later, spike floors can be controlled near the doorways to damage and slow monsters, and eventually you unlock the ability to unleash an earthquake attack. If you manage to hold out until the 20 minute mark, you win.

Comingsoon...Tera WikiGet Into the Tera Beta Of course winning isn't easy. The packs of monsters streaming in from the doorways gradually get stronger and attack in larger clusters. Periodically extremely large bosses will charge into the room, which will certainly keep your healer busy as your tank frantically scrambles to draw aggro away from the relic. If you're in an especially organized group there's even more opportunity to excel, as at once point a door slides up to reveal an optional boss. If two peel off to defeat him while two more stay back and defend the relic and you manage to take him down, you gain access to additional rewards.

It's a fun, fast encounter, and reason to hope Tera's end game is worth checking out once it moves out of closed beta testing.